A Gentleman Finds Shelter in the Trees

Seven years ago, an unexplained departure left a youthful promise to fade into the past.

Seven years later, an unexpected reunion sent ripples through the calm lake of the heart.

Li Muzi, the youngest professor at Huada's School of Sociology, lived a disciplined life devoted to academia. She thought the past had settled into a peaceful backdrop. But when the name that had left the deepest mark on her youth, Zhou Junze, reappeared as the founder of a partner company and a rising star in tech, the rational world she had so carefully built began to crack. The plain band on his finger, a symbol of boundaries, silently spoke of the distance and uncertainty that seven years had brought.

Zhou Junze, head of Junze Tech, was once a prodigy in mathematics and science, and was now a business leader. He returned with a past and secrets no one knew, drawing closer step by step under the pretext of “collaboration.” His polite, distant “Professor Li” contrasted with the hidden edge in his “old classmate.” He tested the waters and edged closer, hoping to recover traces of the past amid the formalities of their project.

Academic rigor clashed with business ambition, while the ambiguity of the past challenged the reason of the present. As a sociologist's profound insight met a tech pioneer's drive, the two explored the social landscape of the age of artificial intelligence and, without realizing it, untangled the past and present woven between them.

From “Professor Li, it's good to see you again” to calling her by that name reserved just for him, an entire unsolved mystery from their youth stood between them, along with the truth of their mutual secret crush as teenagers.